Talking about sustainability with kids is an important topic as the future of the planet is at stake but this does not need to be something that we add to teachers’ already very full plates as we are able to connect this to various curricular subjects. In 1972, the Stockholm Declaration stated, “the need for environmental education from grade school to adulthood” (as cited in Hensley, 2011, p.102). However, it can be hard to know where to start as many of the resources available to teach sustainability are for older students or activities for home. There is much that teachers can do though to help teach our students about sustainability and why it is important. By planting the seeds now, we can help them grow into lifelong learners who are passionate about helping our earth. In this post I will share some tried and true activities that can be done either in the classroom or in a remote learning experience to help children develop a deeper understanding of sustainability and why it is important to care for our earth.
According to Hensley (2011), we, as educators, have a call to action to the ecological crisis and to “encourage students to embrace their curiosities and passions” so that “we empower them to foster a critical inquisitiveness and a passion for learning (p. 95). First, educators need to help our students understand what sustainability is. While it’s a broad concept, sustainability, in simpler terms, is understanding the impact that we have on the earth, and improving it for future generations (Chivavarone, 2018). This definition allows me to clearly state what sustainability is to children in a clear and concise manner. Children have a good understanding, already at a young age, that what they do have direct consequences and they tend to want to be helpers at this age. By instilling a passion for the environment, and a love for helping the earth, they will develop these skills that will help carry them into adulthood. The activities listed below are ones that are engaging and have direct impact on our earth. They are easy to see demonstrations that make it easy for children to see the importance of sustainability.
These activities are all tried and true lessons in my grade 1/2/3 multiage classroom. I have chosen activities that are suitable for remote and in-class and are COVID safe, as we need to care for our earth and one another.
1. Create your own bird feeder
Students can collect seeds in the fall from flowers or to purchase bird seed from a local shop. Talk with your students about how flowers and berries are a vital food source for birds in the winter. This ties in to repurposing materials, adaptations of animals and daily and seasonal changes in our environment. If you are hanging them outside of your yard you may want to use a peanut butter alternative such as sun-butter. This activity is great for at-home remote learning or in class learning.
2. Freddy the Fish This hands-on activity shows the impact of our waste on water systems and animals. Our class has done this demonstration many times in the past and every year I am amazed at the connections that they make to how the health of the water and how it affects every living creature on earth (“Polluting a Fish for Earth Day (or any day really!),” n.d)
3. Create your own composter
This is one of my favourite activities to do with children as we can use in in our outdoor and indoor garden spaces almost right away. It is amazing to see how the organic matter break down so quickly and we are usually able to start harvesting the compost in under 3 weeks. I love to do this experiment with my students late fall when we are putting our school garden to rest for the winter months. We continue to compost over the winter months so that we have more to add to our winter indoor growing spaces and for in the spring. We are then able to use our compost to do some plant growth experiments to see the importance of a rich soil and how it helps our plants grow. We plant the same type of seed, usually a bean or a mini-sunflower, in various growing mediums and see how when a seed has a rich soil, it grows better and bigger. This allows students to really see how important it is to compost as it helps our plants grow bigger and stronger and keeps compostable items out of the landfill.
4. Create an indoor vermicomposter
Once students have been able to see how the breakdown happens in a composter through creating our own mini composter, they can create indoor vermicomposters for in the classroom. As the worms multiply, many of our students have convinced their important adults in their home to let them take them home and create vermicomposting habitats at home as well. We were able to have the community organization "Green Action Centre" to help us set up our composters and help us troubleshoot any problems we encountered.
5. Grow a Garden
U-M psychology researchers found memory and attention spans improved by 20 percent after people spent an hour interacting with nature (Jonides, 2008). That is one of the many reasons that we try to spend as much time outside as we can. One way that we have done this is by growing a garden at our school. This project started with one student asking how apples grows during snack time and has turned into a multiple year inquiry project that continues to grow. By finding plants in catalogues and measuring out gardens to plan for our planting, letter writing and creating videos (for those not yet ready to write) to ask for donations, studying pollinators such as bees and butterflies, interviewing experts in our community, creating multiple gardens, harvesting and preserving the produce, trying new foods and sharing it with others, to starting it all over and finding ways to grow it and make it better every year. It truly covers the essential learning outcomes in the primary classroom.
6. Outdoor Play
Finally, children just to get outside and play! By having a connection to their own local community, children are connected to their environment and become stewards of our earth both when they are young and as they grow. It generates creativity and innovation, strengthens social bonds, and builds equity and inclusion, and it develops physical and mental health resiliency (“Why is Outdoor Play Important,” n.d.)
Educators have a call to action to provide education about our earth and sustainability. The activities that I have listed above are lessons that allow children to see how their actions, in growing a garden, helping animals in the winter, keeping water clean by not littering, composting, and going out to play, are and have an immediate impact on their world. They can see in just a few short days how adding apple cores and leaves in a bottle make compost and that the compost is better for plants. Children can see the direct correlation in these activies. It is my hope and desire by teaching children about sustainability, is that they will grow to see that they can make a difference in their own world and that makes it better, for all of us, around the world.
Resources:
Barbara, T., & Stokke, L. (2020, February 07). Polluting a Fish for Earth Day (or any day really!). Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://theowlteacher.com/polluting-fish-for-earth-day-or-any-day/
Chiavarone, K. (2019, January 15). 20 Activities for Kids to Learn About Sustainability. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://www.naturespath.com/en-ca/blog/20-activities-kids-learn-sustainability/
EcoKids. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://ecokids.ca/
Green Action Centre. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://greenactioncentre.ca/module/composting-2/vermicomposting/
Hensley, N. (2011). Curriculum studies gone wild bioregional education and the scholarship of sustainability. New York, NY, NY: Lang.
Kailka, M. (n.d.). What is political ecology? Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/geography/research/impact/entitle/
Nrhoads, J. (2008, December 16). Going outside-even in the cold-improves memory, attention. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://news.umich.edu/going-outsideeven-in-the-coldimproves-memory-attention/
Prosper, K., Mcmillan, L. J., Davis, A. A., & Moffitt, M. (2011). Returning to Netukulimk: Mi’kmaq cultural and spiritual connections with resource stewardship and self-governance. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 2(4). doi:10.18584/iipj.2011.2.4.7
Ross, M. (Director). (2016, June 26). Vermicomposting: How worms can reduce our waste [Video file]. Retrieved September 25, 2020, from https://youtu.be/V8miLevRI_o
